"For Rough Night, I'm just trying to adapt the experiences that I've had," she says. "You know, turning 30 and being somebody who has gotten so wrapped up in my work and my own life that then I've taken a second to look around and say, 'How has this affected the people around me, how has this affected my friends and my family?' It's using that experience and self-reflection to then have a point of entry for this story. It makes it a lot easier for me to feel secure in what I'm saying when I've actually experienced it."

"I feel like in some ways I'm just doing my best to replicate real life."

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Rough Night is Aniello's debut feature film, after making her name with the ground-breakingly funny, raw and rough-around-the-edges portrayal of survival in New York in the Comedy Central hit TV show Broad City. She has regularly written and directed the series, including its 2014 pilot episode, collaborating with Glazer and Abbi Jacobson after meeting them at comedy training ground the Upright Citizen's Brigade. She says the show reflects her own experiences of struggling in New York, in share houses and crappy jobs.

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"All I'm really doing is doing my best to replicate the characters and the sensibilities of the people around me," she says. "I think my strength on that show was just trying to take a moment that existed for me and exists now for young people and try to show it honestly on screen through the writing and directing."

In between working on Broad City, Aniello and her writing collaborator and real-life partner, Paul W. Downs, began developing Rough Night, which sparked a bidding war among studios, such was its hot-property status.

It has also triggered headlines because Aniello is the first female director to helm an R-rated comedy since Tamra Davis's stoner fest Half Baked in 1998.

Does she mind the relentless women-in-film/comedy debate rearing its head again?

"I wish that it was the kind of thing that we didn't have to talk about all the time or that it wasn't part of the conversation of the movie, but because it's there I'm more than happy to help amplify the statistics that are pretty terrible.

"So if this is an excuse to be like, hey guys, let's take a look at how few female comedy directors there are and what are we going to do about this, if this is an opportunity to have that discussion then I'm all for it. I'm all for the greater good of getting those numbers looking a little bit more even. But, of course, I wish I didn't have to have that conversation at all because I wish it wasn't so abysmal to begin with."

One of the film's key elements, Aniello says, was to make sure the five female characters slotted together with their "own vibe and flavour" without anyone overpowering the ensemble.

And there's an Aussie in the mix: Pippa, played by McKinnon, is Jess's old friend from a semester abroad in Australia. She's also based on a real person, Aniello's friend Pippa Lord from Melbourne, who now lives in New York and Aniello describes as a "magical Stevie Nicks" who uses words like "amazoir" and "begenius".

"We thought it'd be fun to have a new person in the friend dynamic who knocks the equilibrium off the friends group and we thought of who do we know personally that we could use as inspiration: our friend Pippa," she says.

"She's a really good friend of ours who's just so funny and so charming and loveable and that naturally came together as the kind of person that if your best friend became friends with Pippa you would be jealous of her because she's so cool and fun to be with."

Johansson also steps up in her first comedy role.

"What everybody does know about Scarlett is that she's an incredible actress and that also translates into comedic timing," says Aniello. "I think all very, very good actors are also super-funny because they're always in the moment, they're listening, they're reacting. That's really the most important tenets of comedy, being in the moment and reacting honestly, and because of that she's also just so spot on on delivering a joke. She's always reacting in the moment so all her little nuanced things are so funny.

"Being able to direct an actor of her calibre, I will say at first it was a little intimidating, but she's such a cool and down-to-earth, awesome woman, we really clicked and I would make a million movies with her if it was up to me."